September 2, 2012 - September 8, 2012

Thursday, September 06, 2012

The Daily Caller's Matthew Boyle reports that emails between senior officials at The Gallup Organization, show senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod attempted to intimidate the polling firm when its poll results found Mitt Romney leading President Obama.

According
to Boyle, after Gallup declined to change its polling methodology,
Obama’s Department of Justice hit it with an unrelated lawsuit:

"Since
Gallup first roused Axelrod’s ire, Obama’s Justice Department revived
old allegations against the firm that, according to now former Gallup
employee Michael Lindley, the polling company violated the False Claims
Act by over-charging the federal government for its services."

Boyle
explains that "Michael Lindley was a field organizer in Council Bluffs,
Iowa, for then-Sen. Obama’s 2008 run for president before joining
Gallup, a fact omitted from the DOJ’s legal filings and from most press
accounts."

In a very Nixonian abuse of power the Obama/Holder Justice Department announced it was joining the lawsuit
on August 22, 2012. The announcement also indicated that the Justice
Department plans to assert additional claims related to Gallup’s
subcontract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). During
most of the two weeks before the announcement, Gallup's tracking poll showed Romney leading Obama 47 to 45 percent.

Contrast team Obama's treatment of Gallup to that of Nate Silver. As Buzz Feed Politics reports, team Obama was more appreciative of silvers work and rewarded him.

"Obama's
polling analysts, Issenberg writes, wanted to test their internal polls
against Silver's model. And so — in an unusual step for the
closely-held campaign, and for the analyst, who was then running his own
website, FiveThirtyEight.com — the Obama campaign offered Silver access
to thousands of its own internal polls, on the condition Silver sign a
confidentiality agreement, which he did. (Silver, who now writes a
widely-read blog for the New York Times declined to comment on the
arrangement.)"

You really must go to the Daily Caller and read some of what is in the emails. Here is a teaser:

"In
response to that email, a third senior Gallup official said he thought
Axelrod’s pressure “sounds a little like a Godfather situation.”

“Imagine
Axel[rod] with Brando’s voice: ‘[Name redacted], I’d like you to come
over and explain your methodology…You got a nice poll there….would be a
shame if anything happened to it…’”

In a second email chain titled
“slanderous link about Gallup methodology,” another senior Gallup
official noted that a Washington Examiner story on Axelrod’s anti-Gallup
tweet was “on [the] Drudge [Report] right now,” before writing that the
episode was “[s]o politically motivated, it’s laughable.”

“As
they say in b-ball: he’s trying to work the refs,” that official wrote
to other senior Gallup staffers. “What a joke. Axel’s had a bad week. He
got in the middle of the Ann Romney thing. Then said the country is
going in the wrong direction. (Oops!) Now he’s swinging at us….”"

The
Axelrod vs. Gallup story is more evidence that Obama is losing and the
campaign is desperate. The Good news is that Gallup did not cave in to
the attempted "intimidation" and now the story is public. Does the
Axelrod vs.Gallup story explain why we have seen so many skewed polls during this campaign?

The
main stream media should Demand that Axelrod and Gibbs tell the truth
about what happened. As Boyle writes, the emails contradict what
Axelrod’s fellow Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs told the Washington Times’ Kerry Picket this week about the campaign’s dealings with Gallup:

Picket reported that Gibbs said he was unaware of any communications between the Obama campaign and Gallup.

Was Gibbs lying to Picket? Was he misinformed? The emails suggest its one or the other.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

In another blow to the so-called fact-checking propaganda wing of the Democrat Party, the Government Accountability Office
(GAO), said yesterday that the Obama regime must give Congress the
chance to block President Obama's scheme that lets states change, some say "gut," the Clinton-era welfare to work rules Obama long opposed:

"In
July, the Obama administration offered states more latitude in how they
can run cash-assistance programs that replaced the welfare system after
the 1996 overhaul passed by Congress and signed in to law by President
Bill Clinton. … 'It must be submitted to Congress and the comptroller
general before taking effect,' wrote Lynn H. Gibson, GAO's general
counsel, in a letter to the lawmakers on Tuesday."

The GAO finding comes just in time for impeached former President Clinton gives the keynote speech tonight at the Charlotte "we all belong to the government" Democrat National Convention.

According to the Wall Street Journal,
the GAO's rebuke of the Obama scheme resulted from a request by
Republicans, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan,
in which they asked the GAO to determine whether the administration's
changes were the equivalent of a rule change that would require
congressional approval. Hatch praised the GAO findings Tuesday, saying
that they were further proof that the administration could not change
the program without Congress's consent:

"This analysis
is unequivocal that any changes must be submitted to Congress," he
said. "Circumventing Congress, as this White House has done, is a
flagrant abuse of our system of checks and balances and an insult to
American taxpayers."

You will surely recall how
quickly the Democrats' now disgraced fact-checking propaganda wing
jumped to Obama;'s defense when Romney said the Obama rule change would
gut the work to welfare reform rules. Now we know that Romney was right
to go after the Obama power grab dressed up as an ordinary "information memorandum."

"In
1996, President Clinton signed bipartisan legislation to reform welfare
by requiring work. Sixteen years later, President Obama quietly gutted
this landmark law. Mitt Romney will restore the bipartisan reforms to
welfare and move our country in the right direction."

That
is such a foreign concept. To me Saying you belong to the government is
like saying you are a subject of some monarch, or worse enslaved.

You can't say it any better than Mitt Romney did:

"We don't belong to government, the government belongs to us."

It
is not surprising to me that the Obama campaign is already trying to
distance itself from the ill-conceived tag line by claiming it was
neither an OFA nor a DNC video.

What is surprising is that
Democrats actually do believe we all belong to the government. Watch the
accompanying video put together by the good folks at Revealing
Politics after Caleb Bonham and Kelly Maher interviewed convention-goers
about the we belong to the government tag line.

I know the
Democrats are big supporters of ever more and ever bigger government,
but really "we all belong to the government." That's just not my
America.

What else should we expect from the party that brought us "you didn't build that" and the Charlotte convention motto "we make it possible?"

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Today, the national debt is $16,015,769,788,215.80 (as of 8/31/12 -- US Department of the Treasury, TreasuryDirect.gov,
accessed 9/4/12). It was $10,626,877,048,913.08 when Obama became
president. That is an increase of more than a five and one-half trillion
dollars (50 percent) during in the forty-two months of the Obama
presidency.

In honor of this momentous occasion, the
Republican National Committee in conjunction with Romney for President
released a new video titled, "$16 Trillion." You can watch the "$16
Trillion." video here.

$16
trillion is more than the value of all the goods and services produced
in the United States last year. ("Gross Domestic Product," Bureau of
Economic Analysis, BEA.gov, accessed 9/4/12.) $16 trillion is also 25 percent of the world's gross domestic product.

It
gets worse. According to Duquesne University Economics Professor Antony
Davies, the debt and unfunded obligations of the federal government
total $64.09 trillion. An amount greater than the "economic output of the entire planet." That's right, the entire planet.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took President Obama to task for the 50 percent increase in the national debt during his presidency:

"The
past four years Barack Obama hasn't offered any serious solutions to
get our spending under control and instead he has run 4 straight years
of trillion dollar deficits. President Obama's budget got zero votes in
Congress and we can only expect more of the same inaction in a second
term."

On July 3, 2008, Presidential candidate Obama said that adding $4 trillion in debt was "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic."
Obama was referring to the $3.764 trillion that had been added to the
national debt during the seven and one-half years Bush had been
president. Obama of course got his facts wrong when he falsely claimed
President Bush increased the national debt by $4 trillion "by his
lonesome." When Speaker Pelosi took over Congress on January 3, 2007,
the national debt was $8.7 trillion. So the Democrats must get some of
the credit for one of the four trillion dollars candidate Obama tried to
blame on Bush.

President Obama, in his proposed Fiscal Year 2013 budget,
would spend $3.8 trillion. But the federal government will only collect
$2.5 trillion in taxes, resulting in a deficit of $1.3 trillion. That
$1.3 trillion is an amount larger than Congress appropriates to operate
the federal budget.

The problem is easily stated; spending on
mandatory programs and interest is greater than taxes collected.
According to Mason, in order to balance the budget, Congress would have
to raise taxes 50 percent or eliminate the federal government.

You can watch the "United States Budget Dilemma" video here.

Congress
has failed to adequately address the problem by continuing raise the
debt limit and borrow more and more until we now have a $16 Trillion
national debt. $16 Trillion exceeds 100 percent of the nation's gross
domestic product and is 25 percent of the world's gross domestic
product. Worse the Democrat-controlled Senate hasn't even passed a
budget in over three years.

Back in February 2011, I wrote "Just How broke are we?"
about Duquesne University Economics Professor Antony Davies' analysis
about the debt and unfunded obligations of the federal government
totaling more than $64 Trillion. I asked Professor Davies about Molson's
video. He said the figures in the video match his calculations, which
are straightforward. Professor Davies agrees, mandatory spending
currently exceeds federal tax revenues, so shutting down the entirety of
what most people think of as "the government" will still not balance
the budget.

Professor Davies also explained that if current
trends continue the U.S. will become operationally bankrupt in 2037 and
will be actually bankrupt in 2047. And that ignores the potential effects of ObamaCare.

Bankruptcy occurs when the annual interest on the debt equals federal revenue. At thispoint, it becomes mathematically impossible for the government to avoid default.

Operational bankruptcy occurs when the annual interest on the debt equals federalrevenue less discretionary spending. At this point, it becomes impossible for thegovernment to fund anything other than mandatory spending (which includes welfare,Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, veterans services, and interest on the debt). Underthe Antideficiency Act, Federal agencies must cease operations (except in emergencies)when they lack funding.

There is no easy answer to our budget dilemma. We must reform
entitlements. As the Greek experience shows, any viable solution will be
painful for everyone.

Romney
got there three days earlier because he cared enough to skip a campaign
rally in Virginia in order to inspect the damage done by Isaac. If
Romney had not made the extra effort to visit Louisiana, does anyone
seriously think Obama would have bothered to show up at all.

Obama
was too busy flying all over the country fundraising and campaigning to
visit the storm damage. At least he was until Romney made his
inspection trip. I know the White House claims Obama made the decision
to visit Louisiana before Mitt Romney's announcement
that he would be going to the state Friday to see damage from Hurricane
Isaac. Frankly I just don't believe it. Do you? After all Obama
announced that he would tour Hurricane Isaac damage in Louisiana only
after Romney did.

Obama has done this before.
Last summer Obama ignored a request from five congressmen to tour flood
damage in Sioux City, Iowa. Instead, Obama campaigned on other side of
Iowa.

In honor of Labor Day, and as Democrats gather for their national
convention, Conservatives have declared today "National Empty Chair
Day."

Yes, it's play on Clint Eastwood's infamous speech to an empty chair representing an absent PresidentObama during the Republican National Convention. Conservatives are going after Obama’s record using the hashtag #emptychairday.

According to Politico
by Monday morning, the #emptychairday hashtag began trending on Monday
morning as users tweeted pictures of empty chairs. In addition to My
RedState colleague Ben Howe's fine empty chair effort, seen above, you
can see more examples at Legal Insurrection and Hot Air.

Keeping
in step with the empty chair, some might say empty suit theme, the
Republican National Committee released a new video titled, "We've Heard
It All Before." The new video takes Obama to task for recycling the same
tired rhetoric and failed promises that he campaigned on four years
ago.

As RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said, "The only question he [Obama] refuses to answer is 'are you better off?'" As we said earlier, while the Obama Campaign is having a tough time answering that question, last October, Obama admitted that Americans are not better off than they were four years ago. You can watch Obama's admission here.

The headline is a reference to the new Elon University/Charlotte Observer Poll
shows the GOP presidential candidate leading President Barack Obama 47
percent to 43 percent among likely voters in North Carolina.

The
poll found the women vote almost evenly split on their support 45
percent for Obama 44 percent Romney. So much for the gender gap.

The
respondents said Romney would do a better job of handling the economy
52 percent to 39 percent and more said that Romney more closely shares
their values 48 percent to 45 percent.

The economy/jobs is the most important issue for likely North Carolina voters.

The poll was conducted August 25-30, 2012, and has a margin of error of 3 percent.

In
2008, Obama became the first Democrat to carry North Carolina since
1976. Trying for a repeat, the Obama campaign Obama campaign has
maintained a big presence in North Carolina and chose Charlotte for the
Democrats' convention.

Back in April, Romney visited Charlotte and gave a "prebuttal" to the Democrat's convention.
Standing in front of the Bank of America stadium where President Obama
will formally accept the Democrats' nomination Romney reminded us that
"President Obama 'has failed by the measurements he set.'" Romney went
after Obama over the so-called stimulus, unemployment, debt, cutting
Medicare to pay for ObamaCare, Social Security, foreclosures, home
values, gas prices and tuition.

In conjunction with his Obama convention 'prebuttal,'
the Romney campaign released a video highlighting how the Obama
Presidency has failed when evaluated by the measures of progress
established by Obama. Four years ago at the Democratic National
Convention in Denver, Colorado, then-candidate Barack Obama said that Democrats measure progress by whether people can find a job and provide for themselves and their families. In North Carolina, it is not easy for people to find a job and provide for themselves and their families:

It
all comes back to Ronald Reagan's famous question: "Are you better off
than you were four years ago?" And even Obama admits that we are not
better off than we were four years ago. A question which the Obama
Campaign is having a tough time answering, even though last October, Obama admitted that Americans are not better off than they were four years ago. You can watch Obama's admission here.

Obama's
concession invites a constant comparison to President Carter's failed
presidency using the devastating, "Are you better off than you were four
years ago?" question posed by then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan
at the end of his debate with Jimmy Carter on October 28, 1980:

"Next
Tuesday is Election Day. Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls,
will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when
you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are
you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go
and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more
or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is
America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that
our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?
And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your
choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don't agree,
if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last
four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four,
then I could suggest another choice that you have."

You can watch a video Reagan's devastating question here.
The more people are exposed to Reagan's "are you better off" question
to Carter, the more the belief that Obama will also be a one-term
president is reinforced.

The number of Democrats slipped to 33.3 percent giving Republicans a 4.3 percent advantage. According to Rasmussen, that's the largest advantage ever held by Republicans and the largest for either party since April 2010.

The number of voters not affiliated with either major political party fell to 29.2 percent -- the smallest number of unaffiliated voters since 2009.

The biggest partisan gap advantage Rasmussen ever measured for Democrats was 10.1 percent in May 2008:

"Between
November 2004 and 2006, the Democratic advantage in partisan
identification grew by 4.5 percentage points. That foreshadowed the
Democrats' big gains in the 2006 midterm elections. The gap grew by
another 1.5 percentage points between November 2006 and November 2008
leading up to President Obama's election."

The
Democrats' advantage was short lived. It started declining the month
Obama was inaugurated. It then declined through 2009, but fell
dramatically as the ObamaCare debate reached its peak and the Senate Democrats voted for it in the dead of night.

As they have from the beginning, most voters (53%) believe the health care law will increase the federal deficit.

Fifty-two percent (52%) think the cost of health care will go up as a result of the new law.

A plurality (48%) also thinks the quality of care will get worse under the new law.

Democrats
failed to listen to America and passed ObamaCare in true partisan
fashion -- without a single Republican vote. Never in modern memory has a
major piece of legislation passed in such a strictly partisan fashion.

The
Democrats have been paying the price ever since. Republicans became
governors of New Jersey and Virginia in November 2009. Scott Brown won
Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in January 2010. Then in the general election
the Democrats took a thumpin as the Republicans retook control of the
House. And now a record number of Americans call themselves Republicans.